On 17/12/2017 20:56, alan_m wrote:
On 17/12/2017 19:59, newshound wrote:

*Slightly* surprised not to find Ovo not offering something else
reasonably competitive to what I guess is their "standard variable
rate" tariff which kicked in a couple of weeks ago when my previous
deal expired.


I get the impression that a company will offer a good deal in order to
gain 100,000s of new customers and then not have another competitive
deal until they have lost X% of those new customers.Â* They can make more
money from customer inertia - customers not realising they have been
moved to higher tariff for 3 months or more.

The other trick that they often play is after, say, 6 months suggest you
should move to another of their saver tariffs without paying a penalty.
They will suggest that these tariffs save you money compared to the
tariff you are on but in reality they are more expensive. They use the
industry standard way of calculating your YEARLY spend on the two
tariffs - one of which will include 6 months of energy at the higher
standard tariff . This may result in a customer staying with the
supplier for a number of years because each switch results in a new 12
month contract with penalties if changing to another supplier.

In my last two moves the company I was with was one of the cheapest at
the time but at the end of the year any followup fixed price contracts
with them tended to be the more expensive in the marketplace.

By the way, if you pay by DD check your bank statements during the
switch period.Â* When I switched away from British Gas a good number of
years ago they erroneously applied the early end of contract penalties.
The penalty amounts NEVER appeared on any bill but were taken as two
separate DD payments (dual fuel) straight from my bank account.



Thanks for the warning, will look out for that!

In article ,
newshound writes
On 17/12/2017 20:56, alan_m wrote:
On 17/12/2017 19:59, newshound wrote:

*Slightly* surprised not to find Ovo not offering something else
reasonably competitive to what I guess is their "standard variable
rate" tariff which kicked in a couple of weeks ago when my previous
deal expired.

I get the impression that a company will offer a good deal in order
to gain 100,000s of new customers and then not have another
competitive deal until they have lost X% of those new customers.*
They can make more money from customer inertia - customers not
realising they have been moved to higher tariff for 3 months or more.
The other trick that they often play is after, say, 6 months suggest
you should move to another of their saver tariffs without paying a
penalty. They will suggest that these tariffs save you money compared
to the tariff you are on but in reality they are more expensive. They
use the industry standard way of calculating your YEARLY spend on the
two tariffs - one of which will include 6 months of energy at the
higher standard tariff . This may result in a customer staying with
the supplier for a number of years because each switch results in a
new 12 month contract with penalties if changing to another supplier.
In my last two moves the company I was with was one of the cheapest
at the time but at the end of the year any followup fixed price
contracts with them tended to be the more expensive in the marketplace.
By the way, if you pay by DD check your bank statements during the
switch period.* When I switched away from British Gas a good number of
years ago they erroneously applied the early end of contract
penalties. The penalty amounts NEVER appeared on any bill but were
taken as two separate DD payments (dual fuel) straight from my bank account.

Thanks for the warning, will look out for that!
Me too as I've just left BG (Sainsburys Energy)
--
bert

On 17/12/2017 21:51, newshound wrote:
On 17/12/2017 20:56, alan_m wrote:

By the way, if you pay by DD check your bank statements during the
switch period.Â* When I switched away from British Gas a good number of
years ago they erroneously applied the early end of contract
penalties. The penalty amounts NEVER appeared on any bill but were
taken as two separate DD payments (dual fuel) straight from my bank
account.



Thanks for the warning, will look out for that!

Switching up to 49 days before the end of a contract negates any exit
fees. So should avoid that problem?

--
F

On 17/12/2017 23:55, F wrote:
On 17/12/2017 21:51, newshound wrote:
On 17/12/2017 20:56, alan_m wrote:

By the way, if you pay by DD check your bank statements during the
switch period.Â* When I switched away from British Gas a good number
of years ago they erroneously applied the early end of contract
penalties. The penalty amounts NEVER appeared on any bill but were
taken as two separate DD payments (dual fuel) straight from my bank
account.



Thanks for the warning, will look out for that!

Switching up to 49 days before the end of a contract negates any exit
fees. So should avoid that problem?



It should do, but in my case BG made a mistake and the money was
refunded after I'd noticed that they had taken it As it it didn't
appear on any bill it could have been easily missed if bank statements
were not thoroughly checked.

The other gotcha may be with a dual fuel deal in that switching of the
electric and gas were at different dates and hence if the contract was
for 12 months rather than a fixed end date there could be up to a month
difference in the end of contract dates.

--
mailto : news {at} admac {dot} myzen {dot} co {dot} uk

On 17/12/2017 19:59, newshound wrote:
On 15/12/2017 20:31, newshound wrote:
Been dual fuel with Ovo (Which? best customer feedback) for a while,
decided to check the Which? switch site and found I can save over £300
pa on two separate fixed price contracts. Internet, no paper, direct
debit of course.

Relatively painless apart from the hassle of setting up two DDs rather
than one. Nice to have the easy option to view fixed price contracts
only.

Having skimmed the responses to date, I suppose I'd have to say I trust
Which? (who are very open about getting kickbacks), am a bit more
cautious about Moneysavingexpert although it is certainly a site I have
looked at in the past, and would be slightly more careful about Flipper.

Fair comment that I have not checked the market for three or four years.
My consumption is probably a bit higher than average, but not "mansion"
scale. *Slightly* surprised not to find Ovo not offering something else
reasonably competitive to what I guess is their "standard variable rate"
tariff which kicked in a couple of weeks ago when my previous deal expired.

Probably because you are not a new customer. OVO was the best fixed deal
for me, but previously Sainsburys, NPower, EDF and a couple of others
have been - all but one for one time only, then the repeat price has
been way above what I can get elsewhere.

The other interesting finding (to me) was that duel fuel deals are no
longer generally competitive. If you don't mind taking a chance on an
unknown name rather than one of the big six, then going for small
players who specialise only in one market perhaps makes more sense.
These days, with paperless online systems and DD, the old savings from a
"single bill" and "single payment" are evaporating.

Single bills would have been cheaper for me, but at only about £10 a
year less, I decided that covenience would win out and went for the dual
fuel offering.

SteveW